


Floodgates

by Riona



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Coming out (sort of), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 14:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6010666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jacob really needs to talk to someone about Maxwell Roth. (Set after Sequence 8.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floodgates

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! I think this is the least appropriate day I could possibly have posted this on, but, er, here it is.

“Flowers arrived for you,” Evie remarks when Jacob comes into her carriage (barging in without announcing himself, as always). “Red roses.” She thinks she’d probably have guessed their meaning even without her efforts to help Henry with his collection. The meaning of the black feathers in the arrangement eludes her, but they certainly look striking against the red. “Whose eye have you caught? Should I write a letter of thanks to the Prime Minister’s wife?”

Mentioning Mrs Disraeli usually gets _some_ sort of reaction out of Jacob: a laugh, an embarrassed smile. But today he barely seems to hear her at all. He glances briefly at the flowers and then away, as if afraid that looking too long might wound him somehow.

He looks... haunted. A scent like woodsmoke clings to his clothes.

“Jacob?” Evie asks. “Are you all right?”

“Maxwell Roth is dead,” Jacob says.

Evie considers this for a moment. It doesn’t sound like bad news. “Do we know how he died?”

“If I had to guess,” Jacob says, “I’d say my blade in his throat had something to do with it.”

Evie pauses.

“You didn’t tell me you were planning to go after him,” she says, evenly. “If you didn’t happen to run into him unguarded in the street, I might be about to be angry with you.”

“It was between me and him.”

“Jacob, we have to discuss our plans! I could _help_ you, we have resources, you really are going to get yourself killed one day—”

“Evie,” Jacob says. His voice breaks on her name, and Evie falls silent at once. “Can I... can we talk? Please?”

Evie gestures to the desk chair, and he pulls it up to sit with her.

“Did something happen?” Evie asks. “Is it Henry? Is he hurt?”

“Greenie’s fine,” Jacob says. “He’s in the next carriage, composing poems about your face.”

Her shoulders stiffen at the dig. Things are still tense between her and Henry – _Mr Green_ – and... well, comments like that certainly don’t help. But a part of her is just relieved that Jacob can still make jokes, despite whatever it is that has him looking so troubled.

“Are Roth’s men coming after us?” she asks.

“The Blighters? Are they ever _not_ coming after us?”

Evie folds her hands on her lap. “Then tell me what’s wrong. Don’t make me guess if you’re going to sneer at my guesses.”

Jacob opens his mouth and closes it again.

There’s a long silence.

Evie sighs. “If you’re just here to waste my—”

“Roth kissed me.”

What?

“Roth?” Evie asks. “ _Maxwell_ Roth? Or... does he have a wife? Or a daughter?”

“ _The_ Roth,” Jacob says.

Well. She isn’t sure what she expected, but that certainly hadn’t crossed her mind.

She can’t read Jacob’s expression. He’s... uncomfortable? Ashamed? She can’t tell what he’s thinking. His face is usually so open to her.

“And that’s why you killed him?” It doesn’t feel right, but...

Jacob looks startled. “No. I – no. He was already dying. He just... grabbed me.”

Evie shivers. Suddenly she can’t stop picturing Lucy Thorne, twitching and choking on her own blood, _kissing her_ after Evie plunged that dagger into her neck. “It must have been upsetting.”

Jacob stares at Evie’s hands. She wishes he’d look at her face.

“I don’t know why I’m upset,” he says, very quietly.

“One of our enemies kissed you against your will, Jacob,” Evie says, trying to keep her voice gentle. It’s difficult to speak seriously with her brother. They joke or they argue; she’s not used to anything in between. “It isn’t a mystery.”

Jacob doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Well, he’s dead now,” Evie says. “He can’t get near you.” She looks at the roses, and suddenly she remembers Jacob’s expression when he first saw them, and she knows who they’re from. She gets to her feet. “I’ll throw these flowers away.”

“No,” Jacob says, quickly. “Don’t.”

“Don’t? You can’t even look at them.”

“I know.” He pulls a few threads out of his fraying cuff. It’s a habit she’s always tried to discourage. “Can you keep them in your carriage? So they’re here, but not... all the time. And I think I’ll feel safer if I know you’re near them.”

Evie sits down and looks carefully at him. He’s still avoiding her eyes. “You want them as a trophy?”

“Yes,” he says, too quickly, and then, “I don’t know.”

It seems impossible. He’ll laugh at her, or be offended. But she thinks she might have to ask.

“You said he kissed you,” she says.

“Yes,” he says. “I haven’t _forgotten_ , Evie.”

“And how did you...” How is she supposed to have this conversation? “How did you feel about that?”

Jacob stares very hard at the wall.

“I just... I keep thinking, what if he’d done it earlier?” he says. His voice sounds _wrong_ for him, quiet and broken, and Evie knows this must be what he really wanted to say from the beginning. “I keep... seeing this world where he kept me next to him as his, as his _pet_ , and I might never have realised what I was doing because I’d have been too blinded by...” He looks up at Evie, helplessly. “You know what? He was an awful person, and he needed to die. But he kissed me, and I – I wanted to take back what I’d done, because for a moment none of that mattered if he loved me.”

Evie has to take a moment to squeeze the arms of her chair, ground herself, be sure she’s really here and hearing this. They _can’t_ be talking about Maxwell Roth.

“He was trying to get inside your head,” she says. She diplomatically refrains from mentioning that he’s evidently succeeded. “It didn’t mean anything.”

“I don’t know,” Jacob says. “You didn’t see the ‘performance’ he put on for me. I think I broke his heart.” He fidgets with his hidden blade. “And then I stopped it.”

“Which was clearly the right thing to do,” Evie says.

“I know,” Jacob says. “It doesn’t help.”

_Don’t let personal feelings compromise the mission._ It’s all she can think of. He might never forgive her if she says it.

“But you didn’t even know him,” she says, desperate for this to make sense somehow. “If he watched you from afar and developed some sort of obsession, that’s one thing, but... look, you never really spoke to him, did you?”

Jacob hesitates. “Well... do you remember that letter he sent? The invitation to dinner?”

“The invitation we discussed?” Evie asks, a feeling of unpleasant certainty creeping over her. “The invitation we both agreed it would be unwise to accept?”

“I may have accepted.”

“ _Jacob_.”

“Believe me, I wish I’d taken your advice,” Jacob says, which... all right, mollifies Evie a little. “But you can’t tell me you wouldn’t have been curious.”

“I would certainly have been curious,” Evie says. “And then I would have remembered that there are more important things than satisfying one’s curiosity.”

“Anyway, I went to see what he wanted,” Jacob says. “And he...” He hesitates. “Well, he essentially said that he wanted to spend some time with me.”

There’s a question in Evie’s mind that she really doesn’t know how to approach. “Just, er, just the two of you?”

“No,” Jacob says at once. “Well, sort of. But we didn’t stay in. We went out in his carriage. I was – I was driving, we weren’t both in the cab.”

Evie nods. So things could have been worse, at least. “And?”

“Well,” Jacob says, carefully, “there was a shipment of explosives at St Pancras he was... interested in, and he asked if I’d—”

She was wrong, Evie realises. Things could not possibly have been worse. She’s out of her seat in an instant. “ _You_ were behind the St Pancras explosions?”

Jacob, quite inexplicably, bursts out laughing.

“Does your head actually serve a purpose, or is it just for displaying ridiculous hats?” Evie demands. “Sergeant Abberline is still frantic. The damage will take months to repair. What were you _thinking_ , setting off explosives in a public rail station just because the leader of the Blighters told you to? Of all people! Why would you ever – Jacob, this isn’t funny!”

“I’m sorry,” Jacob manages to say. He’s laughing so hard he’s shaking, and Evie is suddenly struck by the impression that one small push could tip him into sobbing instead. “I really am. It’s just – I’m glad that _this_ is what you’re getting angry about. You know, instead of me.”

“I _am_ angry about you,” Evie says. “I’m furious that I’ve been saddled with this fool of a brother.”

“No, I mean...” His eyes dart to the roses and away again. “Me. Whatever’s wrong in my head.”

For a moment, Evie battles herself. On the one hand, Jacob is an idiot and needs to be informed of this at length. On the other, her brother is frightened and in pain.

She lets out a long sigh, which she hopes will communicate the great personal sacrifice she’s making by suspending her scolding, and sits down again. “There’s nothing _wrong_ with you, Jacob.”

“It’s not what I’m meant to be,” Jacob mutters. “It’s...”

“Illegal?”

Jacob looks up at her. There’s something pleading in his eyes.

“This may have escaped your notice,” Evie says, “but we don’t always entirely conform to the law.”

Jacob shifts. “You really don’t think...?”

“The danger of personal feelings is that they might compromise the mission.”

Instantly, all of Jacob’s nervous uncertainty is pushed out by the expression of stubborn irritation he always adopts when she quotes their father. Usually, Evie hates it; in this case, she thinks it might actually be an improvement. At least it seems to have distracted him from his troubles. He sits back, rolling his eyes. “God, here we go.”

“And your feelings obviously _have_ ,” Evie says. She takes a deep breath. It’s terrifying to say this aloud, but if Jacob could confess how he felt about _Roth_ , of all people... “But no more than mine for Henry. So who am I to say mine are morally any better than yours?”

Jacob considers this for a moment.

“You’ve got better taste,” he points out at last.

Evie is startled into laughing. “I don’t think I can deny that.”

For a moment they just sit and smile at each other. Jacob still doesn’t look entirely himself, but he seems a little calmer now, at least. And in a strange way Evie feels lighter as well, now that she’s spoken her feelings for Henry aloud.

“Now,” Evie says grimly, sitting forward with her elbows on her knees. “We need to discuss St Pancras.”


End file.
